"W-What do you know about that? And it was you that night at the manor roof, wasn’t it—" Aries managed to speak.

The second punch hit the same spot.

He went down hard, blood in his mouth, cheek against the cold ground.

He pushed himself back up on one arm, shaking.

Valkarion leaned in close.

"You don’t need to know anything about it."

A pause.

"You have the Xarveth Stone inside you. And you’re still on the ground bleeding." His fingers found Aries’s chin and tilted it up, making him look. "You crumble. You break. You waste it." The frost-blue eyes didn’t move. "No matter what burns inside you, no matter how much you want to be something... You are WEAK. And you will always be weak."

Aries didn’t look away.

But he couldn’t find anything to answer with either. Because his arm was bleeding onto the floor and his stomach felt like it had caved in and everyone he cared about was frozen in ice behind him.

The words sank in.

Weak.

A flash of red light tore through the tunnel.

"INFERNAL SLASH!"

Valkarion’s eyes snapped up.

He twisted sideways, fast enough that the strike only grazed him, a thin line of red light carving through the air where his chest had been half a second earlier.

He straightened slowly and looked at the other end of the tunnel.

"Tch." Irritation crossed his face. "You again."

Cedric stood at the far end with his sword raised, flames running the full length of the blade. His cloak was torn. His face had blood on it.

The wall behind him still had the crater shape of where he’d hit it.

But his mana was building up rapidly.

The ground around him was cracking from it.

"That’s enough." His eyes were on Valkarion. "You don’t touch my students again."

Valkarion rolled his shoulder back slowly.

He and Cedric looked at each other across the tunnel for one long moment. Two manas pressing against each other in the narrow space, the air between them thick enough to feel.

Then Valkarion smiled.

"You’re more stubborn than I expected, old geezer." He brushed a few shards of frost from his coat. "For a human."

"I’ve been told." Cedric stepped forward, blade rising. "And I’ll be more stubborn than you can handle if you don’t start moving."

Valkarion studied him for another beat.

"I’d pass then. I’ve had enough for today." He glanced back at Aries one last time. "Enjoy the breathing room, boy. Next time I come, I want to see if you’ve learned to do more than crawl."

The shadows at the tunnel’s edge moved.

And then he was gone. The space where he’d been standing simply empty, the frost on the ground the only proof he’d been there at all.

The pressure dropped all at once.

"Where did he go?" Adrian’s eyes swept the half-frozen dungeon.

Cedric held his blade raised for one more second, eyes scanning every corner.

"He’s gone." He turned to face his students. "Is everyone okay?"

Nobody answered. The silence said enough.

He crossed to Valea and Nico first, pressing his hand against the ice still locked around their legs. A flicker of mana cracked it, and it shattered into falling shards.

He moved to Adrian and Eren next. Same thing done in seconds.

"We’re leaving. Right now, while he’s gone."

He walked to Aries last.

Aries was still on his knees on the cold stone floor, one hand against the ground, not looking at anything in particular.

Cedric crouched in front of him and pressed his thumb to the blood on Aries’s cheek, checking it.

"You’re bleeding badly."

"I’m fine."

Valea limped closer, pink hair matted with frost and sweat. "How can you be fine?" Her voice cracked slightly. "He hit you twice in the stomach, Aries. Twice."

"He literally folded you," Nico said. His tone came out harsh, the kind of harsh that’s covering something else entirely. "And you expect us to just believe ’I’m fine’?"

"Aries..." Adrian looked at him from a few feet back with wide.

Aries forced a smile. Thin, shallow, the only kind available right now. "I’m okay. We need to move. Like Gramps said, let’s get out of here."

Cedric held his gaze for a moment. Then nodded. "Alright. Let’s move."

"Ow—" Valea’s leg gave when she tried to step and she grabbed the tunnel wall.

Cedric was beside her immediately. "What’s wrong?"

"Just my leg. It’s nothing, I’ll—"

"I have a bandage," Adrian said, already digging through his pouch.

"Careful! OW—easy, that’s—" Valea hissed through her teeth as Nico crouched and helped wrap it, both of them unusually quiet, unusually careful with each other.

Everyone’s attention shifted to her.

Aries stood slightly apart.

Their voices reached him at a distance. Muffled. Like hearing things through water.

"You crumble. You break. You waste it."

His fist tightened at his side.

’All six of us. We all hit him. And not one scratch.

Not one.’

"You are weak."

His nail cut into his palm. He barely felt it.

"And you always will be."

Something behind his eyes burned. He blinked. Blinked again.

A drop hit his wrist and mixed with the blood already drying there.

He stared at it.

They were tears.

He hadn’t decided to cry. His body had just... started.

The weight of it pressed down on his chest until breathing took effort, until standing took everything he had, until the thing inside him that had been holding all of it together since Valkarion’s fist hit his stomach simply stopped.

’I couldn’t do anything. Not one thing. I was useless.’

The strength in his legs went out like a light.

’I’m weak—’

He heard the sound of his own body hitting the floor before he felt it.

"Aries?" Valea gasped, stunned as she watched him fall.

Then, all of them cried out at once—

"ARIES!!"

The voices stretched, blurred, and faded into nothing.

Aries’s eyes fluttered closed as he saw them running toward him. Then, the world went completely black.